"We wrestle for the postseason — that's the Lehigh way," Santoro said this week as he prepared his team for this weekend's EIWA tournament at Stabler Arena. "This is where you have to be at your best."

The 111th annual tournament, the oldest wrestling event in the country, begins at 10 a.m. Friday with first-round and quarterfinal matches as well as the first two rounds of consolations. The tournament resumes at 10 a.m. Saturday with the semifinals through the seventh-place matches in the first session. The championship session, including the EIWA's Hall of Fame ceremonies and the first-, third- and fifth-place matches, is scheduled for 5 p.m.

Although Lehigh has won a record 34 team titles, Cornell has replaced the Mountain Hawks as the EIWA's dominant program and is the favorite to win its ninth straight team title. The Big Red, ranked third in the USA Today/NWCA rankings and fifth in InterMat's Tournament Strength rankings, have five top seeds including Gabe Dean, ranked No. 1 nationally by InterMat, at 184 pounds.

Lehigh has one top seed, reigning 133-pound champion Mason Beckman, and nine overall seeds to match Cornell for the most in the tournament. Beckman is one of three former EIWA champions in the Hawks' lineup — the others are Randy Cruz (141) and Nate Brown (184), both of whom won in 2013 before redshirting last season.

"There's a lot of parity this year," Santoro said. "I think you'll see a lot of upsets in [quarterfinals] where traditionally that happens in the semis. Well, fans might consider them upsets but coaches won't necessarily see them as upsets."

The EIWA was awarded 53 automatic qualifiers this season to the NCAA tournament in St. Louis. There are also 70 nationwide at-large spots up for grabs for wrestlers who fail to qualify.

Brown (22-4), ranked third nationally by InterMat, is in what Santoro called the toughest class. In addition to Dean (30-2) — who beat Brown twice (3-1 overtime, 7-2) this year — the field includes Princeton's Brett Harner (26-7), Penn's Lorenzo Thomas (No. 7, 22-4), Brown's Ophir Bernstein (24-12) and Bucknell's Tom Sleigh (27-14).

Dean (third), Thomas (sixth) and Bernstein (eighth) are returning All-Americans at the weight. Harner just beat Thomas in a dual last week.

The most wide-open class, Santoro said, could be the one before that, at 174. Cornell's Duke Pickett (23-4) is the top seed but is followed by Army's Brian Harvey (21-7), Lehigh's Santiago Martinez (16-11 but 10-2 at 174), Penn's Brad Wukie (10-6), Navy's Jadaen Bernstein (19-13) and Brown's Ricky McDonald (22-14).

"I don't think any coach will be shocked if any one of five or six guys are in the finals," Santoro said. "If you look at the results between them, they've mostly been one or two-point matches."

Lehigh finished second to Cornell last year and qualified eight wrestlers for the NCAA tournament. If Santoro believes he can take that same number or more to St. Louis in two weeks, he's not saying.

"I don't put numbers on things," he said. "You want to take 10 every year, but we'll have to earn our way there in a lot of weight classes. If I say I'd like to get seven or eight [to nationals], and only four, five or six make it, then is it a disappointment? It depends on the matchups. And then it's what you do when you get there. One year when I was an assistant coach we only took three but all three placed, so I guess we got the right three there. At the end of the day, everyone has trained to be a the national tournament. Now's the time to show you belong."

•At least eight wrestlers from local high schools could be competing this weekend for their respective schools.

At 133: sophomore Grim Gonzalez (Liberty) of Bucknell is 19-9, and redshirt junior Franco Ferraina (Nazareth) of Drexel is 6-7; at 140, sophomore Michael Marrano (Parkland) of Franklin & Marshall is 9-15; at 149, junior Michael Dahlstrom (Pleasant Valley) of American is 13-7; at 157, senior Craemer Hedash (Northern Lehigh) of Army is 10-10 and freshman Tyler Tarsi (Nazareth) of Harvard is 6-8; at 165, freshman Bobby Fehr (Northampton) of Hofstra is 7-4; and at 198, sophomore Tyler Greene (Easton) of Bucknell is 11-10.

•The top eight seeds at each weight class, with the number of NCAA automatic qualifiers in parenthesis: